


Silent Night

by devilinthedetails



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Death, Forbidden Love, Gen, Homophobia, Loss, M/M, Mourning, Racism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-30
Updated: 2017-09-30
Packaged: 2019-01-07 08:55:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12229665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: When Joren dies, only Zahir can mourn him in a cold chapel.





	Silent Night

Silent Night

Zahir stared at Joren, laying on the altar like some northern sacrifice to their just but merciless Mithros—except he was already dead, Zahir reminded himself, trying to ground himself in reality even as he felt as if he were descending into madness—and shivered. Clutching his black woolen cloak, which was bad for Midwinter cheer but appropriate for mourning, tighter about his shoulders, Zahir thought that Joren, whose blue eyes had been shut by a Mithran priest to spare the delicate court ladies that had flocked in their finery to the chapel after Joren had failed his Ordeal, the sight of them gazing into oblivion, looked as if he were deep in a dreamless sleep except for the eerie fact that his chest was motionless, and his skin, always milk-white, was now paler than it had ever been in his life and so translucent that his veins stood in sharp cerulean contrast to his flesh. Zahir couldn’t decide whether Joren looked serene or deathly ill. He hoped that Joren, who had always spent his life at war with something or somebody, had finally found peace in the afterlife. 

Zahir might have prayed to the Voice for that, but he knew that the Voice frowned upon Joren, and besides, he hadn’t prayed to the Voice for anything in years. Once he started squiring for the Voice, the mystique had vanished from the Bazhir religion within weeks. The Voice was charismatic but he was only human and had no special power to intercede with the gods if there were any. Zahir wasn’t sure that there were, or if they were, that they were benignly disposed toward mankind. Not that Zahir could blame them if they despised humanity, since he could be a bit misanthropic himself on occasion. 

He thought about falling to his knees on the hard flagstones to pray to the northern gods—Mithros, the Goddess, and the Black God of death—since, after all, he was in the chapel of Mithros right now. After all, he had been taught how to pray like a northerner during his page years when Lord Wyldon made him attend dawn worship services every Sunday in this very chapel. In the end, though, Zahir knew that he would only find cold comfort in this northern sanctuary. Everything about this chapel from its uncompromising wooden pews to its cold stone floor was designed to intimidate and to remind all who entered just how far from the gods they were. Nothing was warm, nothing was soothing, and nothing provided assurance that mercy would be given or that prayers would even be heard. He hated northerners for their cold chapels. 

Of course, he supposed that cold chapels were perfect for northerners with their frozen blood that came from not spending enough time in the sun and the sand and too much in the snow and rain. He knew that northerners were cold-blooded because Joren’s father and uncle had bolted from the chapel—vowing vengeance against some bitch or other, Zahir didn’t care who and didn’t know why they did when Joren was dead—while Joren’s two younger brothers sat in the front pew, conferring in a whisper audible throughout the chapel because of the acoustics of the arches about how Joren’s sudden passing advanced their inheritance and marriage prospects. Maggots, Zahir thought as he glared contemptuously at Joren’s scheming siblings, gorging on their brother’s barely dead body. 

The court vultures had disappeared, speculating with sympathy that did not mask their relish at the fresh fuel for gossip that Joren’s failure and death in the Chamber provided, and Zahir was the only person in the chapel apart from Joren’s siblings. Joren had once been the most promising of pages and now only Zahir was around to grieve him. 

Memories rang like the northern funeral bells in his head. He and Joren in their first year, standing in two straight lines with the other pages, their staffs clacking against one another as they completed high, middle, and low blocks at Sergent Ezeko’s barked commands. That had been Zahir’s first autumn in the north, and he hadn’t really understood the changing seasons or the cycles that trees went through, so he had been distracted by the dirt-browns and blood-reds of the leaves clinging to or falling from the trees. He paid for his lack of focus when Joren’s staff smashed against a misplaced finger, and, when he couldn’t stifle a gasp of pain, Joren had lowered his weapon and leaned across the space separating his line from Zahir to whisper, sky eyes clouding with concern, “Are you feeling all right?” 

“Never better.” Zahir winced and shook his hand as if that would shake off the hurt, his pride stinging even worse than his finger. “Almost breaking my finger is one of my favorite sensations, thank you for asking.” 

“You can shove that staff up your ass.” Joren’s words were dismissive but his forehead was crinkled with worry. “Why weren’t you paying attention?” 

Zahir had considered replying flippantly that Joren’s beauty had distracted him, but instead he had answered honestly, “It’s sad that the trees are dying.” 

“The trees are what?” Joren’s tone suggested that Zahir might have become a lunatic overnight. 

“Dying.” Impatient at Joren’s stupidity, Zahir jerked his chin at the trees, which even now were shedding strangely colored leaves. “Their leaves aren’t green and are falling all over the place.” 

“That’s what they are supposed to do, Zahir.” Joren rolled his eyes before Wyldon marched over to snap at them that they could gossip like old ladies sewing in their solar on their own time but not during time that was devoted to drills. “They lose their leaves for winter, but they’ll re-grow them for spring and summer.” 

Winter. Zahir remembered his first northern snowfall. Joren had been with him when the white flakes had begun drifting down onto their eyelashes and carpeting the ground in what looked like the powdered sugar northern cooks sprinkled over cakes. Entranced by the splendor of the snow, where every flake looked alike but somehow distinct, Zahir removed his gloves and snatched a snowflake up in his palm. 

“Cold.” He yelped in astonishment as his hand tingled with a chill. 

“It’s frozen water.” Joren nudged him in the shoulder. “Obviously it’s cold. Didn’t you learn anything in that wretched desert you come from, Zahir?” 

“We learn as much about snow as you northerners learn about sun,” retorted Zahir, “but snow can’t be frozen water. I’ve seen frozen water before, and it’s hard, not soft like this snow.” 

“I suppose it’s more like a cloud.” Joren shrugged. “Snow is like a falling cloud.” 

“A cloud.” Zahir was enamored of the notion. “You mean we are walking on a cloud right now?” 

“Yes.” Joren’s face softened into a smile at Zahir’s excitement. “We are. I never thought about it that way, but that’s exactly what we’re doing.” 

Zahir had loved Joren’s smile—the way his sparkling teeth lit up his whole face, a joy that could be mirrored onto those with whom he was speaking—and maybe that was what led, during their second and third year’s to after-hour sword fights laced with innuendo about Joren’s mastery of his sword and sweaty, shirtless wrestling matches where a panting Joren would ask Zahir how he became so good at riding things to which Zahir would breathlessly explain how Bazhir learned to ride bareback. Then Joren would always nip at the nape of Zahir’s neck and call him a savage, an accustation that would never fail to make Zahir’s blood pound like war drums in his veins and his cock stir to stiffness in his breeches. 

Those stolen moments—which Zahir knew was all they had ever been and all they could ever be—had ended as their third year of page training drew to a close. They were spread-eagled on the floor in Joren’s room after another one of their wrestling bouts when Joren announced abruptly, “We can’t keep doing this sort of thing, Zahir. We’re reaching an age when boys being too friendly with each other becomes suspicious, and, if anything found out about what we’re doing together or even suspected it, we’d be dead.” 

“Tell me about it.” Zahir snorted, because Joren only had to worry about a social death where Zahir had to be concerned with a brutal execution practice the Voice was trying with scarce success to end. “Among the Bazhir, if you are a man who likes other men too much, they bury you up to your neck in sand and throw stones at your head until you die. Not a pleasant way to go. We call it stoning.” 

“You Bazhir are barbaric.” Joren stared at Zahir as if he sprouted three heads, and Zahir couldn’t argue with Joren. Stoning was barbaric. “But that’s all the more reason for what’s between us to stop now.” 

“You’re right. You should never have started anything with me. You should’ve just left me on my own.” Zahir lurched to his feet and stomped to the door, trying to smash out the memory of everything he had shared with Joren out of his mind and body forever. “In fact, all you civilized northerners should never have started anything with us barbaric Bazhir. You should’ve left us on our own.” 

After that, the passion had cooled between Joren and Zahir, and the contact between them had become spotty, so spotty, in fact, that Zahir had forgotten to wish Joren good luck before Joren entered the Chamber, which, as far as Zahir was concerned, meant that had never shared a proper farewell. It figured that, after all he and Joren had shared with each other, that they would end up saying everything but goodbye to one another. 

“Zahir.” The king’s voice cut into Zahir’s morbid musings as King Jonathan, resplendent in scarlet and gold, settled into the pew next to Zahir with a rustling of robes. “I thought I might find you here.” 

“My apologies for not jumping off the sinking ship as fast as the rest of the stinking court rats,Your Majesty.” Zahir’s lips were heavy with bitterness. “I hope you weren’t looking for me too long. I would hate not be where I was needed.” 

“You know that you have this Midwinter off.” King Jonathan slung an arm around Zahir’s shoulders, which Zahir realized were shaking again. “You are free to fill your time however you wish, squire.” 

“How generous, sire. As you can see, I’m using my free time to find Mithros.” Zahir waved a palm to encompass the chapel that was now empty because Joren’s siblings had left to plot their advancement elsewhere. “He has been lost far too long.” 

“I wasn’t aware that you were still so close to Joren, Zahir.” King Jonathan sounded torn between compassion and disapproval. 

“I wasn’t close to him still but I did still love him.” On an impulse, because he couldn’t bear being alone in his grief any longer, Zahir dropped all pretense and opened his mind to the Voice in a way that he hadn’t in years, letting the Voice see every stolen, surreptitious moment and every forbidden, exhilarating feeling he and Joren had shared during their tumultuous page years. 

“Oh, Zahir.” King Jonathan squeezed his hands, and Zahir was relieved that he didn’t pull away in disgust after everything Zahir had confided in him. “There’s nothing wrong with being attracted to men, but couldn’t you have chosen someone different, someone better?” 

“I didn’t choose to love Joren.” Numbly Zahir shook his head. “If I could choose to stop loving him, don’t you think I would have, sire? Better yet, wouldn’t I just have stopped loving men entirely so as to not be an outcast among my own people? They call it falling in love for a reason because you don’t have control and you lose all your dignity. It’s very embarrassing, especially if you have the misfortunate of falling in love with another man.” 

“Have a drink, squire.” King Jonathan offered Zahir a silver goblet etched with sapphires. “You look as if you need it.” 

“Another offense that could get me stoned among the Bazhir.” Zahir accepted the chalice in trembling hands and lifted it to his lips, smelling mulled wine. Sipping, he tasted the bite of cinnamon, anise, cloves, and nutmeg floating in a warm vintage of Tyran wine that only royalty could afford. Zahir was drinking a fortune, and he should have savored it more, but it heated him from top to toe and made his thinking less hysterical, so he guzzled it down like a man wandering in the desert would quaff water after stumbling on an oasis. Mulled wine warmed his cold bones and mended his broken heart as nothing else could have in that moment. “My thanks, Your Majesty. Mulled wine is one of the few things northerners do right.”


End file.
